Category: Oct – Dec 2021

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The Shadows of Men by Abir Mukherjee – Review.

About The Book

Calcutta, 1923. When a Hindu theologian is found murdered in his home, the city is on the brink of all-out religious war. Can officers of the Imperial Police Force, Captain Sam Wyndham and Sergeant Surendranath Banerjee track down those responsible in time to stop a bloodbath? 

Set at a time of heightened political tension, beginning in atmospheric Calcutta and taking the detectives all the way to bustling Bombay, the latest instalment in this ‘unmissable’ (The Times) series presents Wyndham and Banerjee with an unprecedented challenge. Will this be the case that finally drives them apart?

My Review

With thanks to the publisher for the copy received. Unfortunately I haven’t had the chance to read all of the books in this series, I have only read the first, but this book was easily read as a standalone novel, and made me more determined to read the books that I haven’t had the time to read.

The novel is dual narrative with both Sam and Suren revealing the predicament they face. It is evident immediately to the reader the danger that Suren faces,in many ways before he does. His accusers are British, he is Indian and despite him being a police officer he is in danger of going to the gallows. Regardless of the fact that he is innocent. The more you read Suren’s account, you see how betrayed he feels by the system and by his colleagues who just assume he is guilty because of his religion.

With Sam, you see the determination to prove that Suren is innocent, the frustration at some of the decisions made and his increasing reliance on some brilliant female characters. 

Because I haven’t read all of this series it was a joy to see Sam without his opium addiction. I could see him as an officer who was coping without the need for the drug and the guilt at needing it. Part of his story is upsetting, his memories of his war experience, but I also got a lot of enjoyment out of his cynicism and frustration when things didn’t entirely go got plan. 

This novel shows how powerful a tool manipulation is. And how even though it takes place a 100 years ago it could just as easily happen today. There were times I felt chilled at the danger innocent people faced for being duped by those who had power and the means. 

But it also showed a fascinating country with some wonderful characters. There were so many who made an impression on me, many of whom were probably invisible to the ones who had authority or a better life. 

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Love Lies Bleeding by Rebecca Bradley – Review.

About The Book

A murdered woman brings Detective Hannah Robbins into the world of women who love lifers.

Audrey King, a teacher of young children, did nothing but fall for Wendell Hayes. A man serving life for slaughtering his family. She’s found dead in her home with the murderous signature of the very man she visited, but there’s no way he could have killed Audrey from inside prison.

Hayes, the son who took a hammer to his parents, his pregnant sister and her husband, horrifies detective Hannah Robbins. The threats he made against her when she arrested him for those murders still haunt her. Yet she must confront him if she is to get to the bottom of this brutal crime.

But Hayes isn’t the only one haunting Hannah’s slowly fracturing mind. A previous case where she was the victim is destroying her. Can she find justice for Audrey before her world spirals out of control, or will she take the investigation down with her?

My Review

With thanks to the author for the copy received. I have read all of Rebecca Bradley’s books and her Hannah Robbins series is my favourite. I do recommend that you read the earlier books to understand the situation that Hannah is facing throughout this novel. 

The case that Hannah’s team is investigating is a brutal one and it was one that made me feel anxious and repulsed. I can’t understand why women would want any type of relationship with a convicted killer. Especially one like Wendell Hayes, who had no charisma at all. He seemed to have no remorse or genuine feelings, just quite happy to mock the detectives who were interviewing him. Especially Hannah who has arrested him years earlier.

But I felt that the investigation wasn’t the main part of the story, instead it was Hannah’s increasing dependence on the painkillers and her being unable to talk to anybody about what she was going through. I really wanted her to be able to talk to Aaron and with his character I can imagine that she unintentionally caused a lot of hurt. It was quite difficult to read at times and I did find it easier to read Aaron’s point of view.

I hope that this series will continue and we can see a positive outcome to her storyline. 

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Saying Goodbye To Tuesday by Chrissie Manby – Blog Tour Review.

About The Book

Stupendo the dog has died. But that’s just the beginning of his story.

To love and protect. The code of the good dog is clear. When single mother Tuesday took on mongrel pup Stupendo, she made a friend for life. Through the best and the worst of times, Stupendo has been there for her. Ever faithful, ever loyal, ever true. Nothing could break their bond. Until last week. 

Stupendo doesn’t know why Tuesday is suddenly ignoring him or why his doggy antics no longer seem to soothe Baby William. It takes his worst enemy – the cat next door – to break the news that Stupendo has become a ghost. 

Somehow left behind on Earth, Stupendo knows he has unfinished business. Enlisting the help of the community of animals in the neighbourhood, Stupendo must get to the bottom of the very human sadness that hangs over his old home and keeps him from saying goodbye to Tuesday.

My Review

With thanks to the publisher for the copy received. Despite never having a dog this book appealed to me, I occasionally like to read something a bit different to the crime or historical fiction I usually read. And I thought it was wonderful.

This is Stupendo’s story, or Stupido, as his sometime friend Caligula calls him. You get to know him as a puppy, cast to one side when Kenton, the horrible boyfriend is around, guardian of baby William and good friends with all the other animals who live nearby. Like him, it’s difficult for the reader to accept that he is a ghost dog for much of the novel.

I found this to be an extremely original novel, I really enjoyed reading about Stupendo’s relationship with Tuesday. The way he thought he manipulated her into treats, his matchmaking efforts with Zena, his guide dog friend, his caring nature with William and most of all his adoration of Tuesday. 

The humans in the novel also had an impact on me. It would be impossible to dislike Tuesday, her friends Emily, Elvis, and Andrew and all feature heavily. But there were three others who were minor characters who in a lot of ways had more of an impact. It’s hard to say why, without saying too much but I feel I can say that there will be people all over the world who are like them. And apart from the death of Stupendo, this was one of the saddest parts of the novel.

I loved everything about this book, even though the ending had me in tears. I would definitely read similar again.

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The Red Monarch by Bella Ellis -Blog Tour Review.

About The Book

The Brontë sisters’ first poetry collection has just been published, potentially marking an end to their careers as amateur detectors, when Anne receives a letter from her friend Lydia Robinson.

Lydia has eloped with a young actor, Harry Roxby, and following her disinheritance, the couple been living in poverty in London. Harry has become embroiled with a criminal gang and is in terrible danger after allegedly losing something very valuable that he was meant to deliver to their leader. The desperate and heavily pregnant Lydia has a week to return what her husband supposedly stole, or he will be killed. She knows there are few people who she can turn to in this time of need, but the sisters agree to help Lydia, beginning a race against time to save Harry’s life.

In doing so, our intrepid sisters come face to face with a terrifying adversary whom even the toughest of the slum-dwellers are afraid of…The Red Monarch.

My Review

With thanks to the publisher for the copy received. I read a lot of historical crime fiction, some of which contain created characters for the novel combined with those from real life whose actions during their life form part of a storyline. However, this is the only series I have read where real life characters are shown in a totally different way to their true personalities. I love reading about the Brontë family’s roles as detecters rather than authors. I also got a lot of enjoyment by seeing at least one character from the Brontë novels and another from their personal lives having a role here.

In this novel the siblings have left their beloved Yorkshire and travelled to London to rescue a friend who is in trouble. They have gone without telling their father where they are going, armed with one of his pistols and are determined to help their friend Lydia, daughter of the woman who has rejected Bramwell Brontë’s advances. He hopes that her mother will change her mind when she hears about his bravery, his sisters just want to help Lydia and her husband whose life has been threatened.

I love this series, the Brontë family is one I know little about and I have never read the novels. I always feel a degree of sadness because of them all dying young within a short time but these books are very entertaining and there is only a brief glimpse of loneliness at the beginning. I love their bravery, their attitudes towards those who try and deter them from their work and their support towards the ones who need it. This novel does feature Bramwell more but most of the focus is on the three sisters.

The hardship, poverty and theatre life are shown brilliantly. The description of the rookery in St Giles is just how I’ve always imagined life to be for many in an over populated London at this time and the description of wild animals used as entertainment was one I had never considered and left me with a sense of outrage and heartbreak. 

The Red Monarch is a fantastic addition to the series, I can’t wait to see what adventures they will face next. 

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The Reacher Guy by Heather Martin -Blog Tour Review.

About The Book

Jack Reacher is only the second of Jim Grant’s great fictional characters: the first is Lee Child himself. Heather Martin’s biography tells the story of all three.

Lee Child is the enigmatic powerhouse behind the bestselling Jack Reacher novels. With millions of devoted fans across the globe, and over a hundred million copies of his books sold in more than forty languages, he is that rarity, a writer who is lauded by critics and revered by readers. And yet curiously little has been written about the man himself.

The Reacher Guy is a compelling and authoritative portrait of the artist as a young man, refracted through the life of his fictional avatar, Jack Reacher. Through parallels drawn between Child and his literary creation, it tells the story of how a boy from Birmingham with a ferocious appetite for reading grew up to become a high-flying TV executive, before coming full circle and establishing himself as the strongest brand in publishing.

Heather Martin explores Child’s lifelong fascination with America, and shows how the Reacher novels fed and fuelled this obsession, shedding light on the opaque process of publishing a novel along the way. Drawing on her conversations and correspondence with Child over a number of years, as well as interviews with his friends, teachers and colleagues, she forensically pieces together his life, traversing back through the generations to Northern Ireland and County Durham, and following the trajectory of his extraordinary career via New York and Hollywood until the climactic moment when, in 2020, having written a continuous series of twenty-four books, he finally breaks free of his fictional creation

My Review

With thanks to the publisher for the copy received. I have two confessions to make. Firstly, I don’t tend to read non-fiction and this is the first autobiography I have read. Secondly, I have never read a book by Lee Child. But after seeing him appear at numerous festivals and listening to my husband’s enthuse about his novels I felt curious. I’m happy to say that this is definitely a type of book I would read again and I will also make a determined effort to start reading the Reacher books.

Most of this 500 page book concerns Jim (or Lee) before he became a hugely successful novelist. It is one that fascinated me, and I felt an array of conflicting emotions. There was the letter that is shown early on in the novel that he wrote for an online project ‘Letter to an Unknown Soldier’ on the 100th anniversary for the declaration of war that reduced me to tears. It wasn’t the only occasion when reading this part of the book that I thought that Jim felt guilty to be from a generation that didn’t have to go to war. There were also occasions that made me smile. His determination to stand up to bullies, both in school and the workplace as well as his thoughts regarding many politicians in the UK and USA. And I definitely agreed with him with on the ‘dumbing down’ of the TV station he worked for. 24 hour TV was one of the worst decisions Granada TV ever made.

Jim is obviously an extremely loyal, honest and thoughtful man. He admits throughout feeling detached from his parents but remains close to some family and friends. The loyalty he showed towards his agent and publisher where many would move on at the first opportunity for more fame. And his loyalty towards his many readers. He must have felt pain and bafflement when he received backlash later in the series. He came across as a loner, as someone who has never read the books I thought that this was his only similarity with Reacher.

This isn’t a linear biography, Jim could be a schoolboy and an author years later in the same chapter but once I got used to it I thought it worked well. It’s a remarkable achievement showing the publishing process, the work that goes into promoting an author and his books but more importantly it shows the dedication in publishing a novel yearly  from all involved and the impact that had on Jim. I’m glad that he felt happy enough to retire without regrets.